Irene Schneider holds the Chair of Arabic and Islamic Studies at Göttingen University since 2003 and is currently principal investigator of the ERC Advanced Grant “(De)Colonizing Shari’a? Tracing Transformation, Change and Continuity in Islamic Law in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) in the 19th and 20th Centuries” at the University of Erfurt. She gained her PhD from the University of Tübingen in 1989 and her Habilitation from Cologne University in 1996. Her main fields of interests are ḥadīth-research; reconstruction of early Islamic history; Islamic law in its historical and contemporary manifestations; gender and law in Muslim countries; Islam in Germany; contemporary concepts of ideas and history (civil society, human rights, translation); and law and colonialism. She has worked on Iran, Afghanistan, Morocco, and Palestine.